ENG 255.2069 Global Literatures in English
Spring 2011
Location: Sb d133
T/TH 4:30-5:45pm
Class website:
http://globalsp11.qwriting.org/
Instructor: Christopher Ian Foster
Email: cfoster@qc.cuny.edu
Office: 349 Klapper Hall (3rd floor)
Office Hours: T/TH 3-4pm
Topics, Final Essay:
Due: 5/22/2011 5pm
Drafts (not required): due 5/12/2011
In this section of the course we’ve analyzed and discussed three novels (Dangarembga’s Nervous
Conditions, Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, and Powell’s The Pagoda) as well as Kincaid’s long prose essay, A
Small Place. We’ve also discussed several articles such as excerpts from Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks,
Tyson’s introductions to feminism and psychoanalysis, and interview with Dangarembga, Baldwin and
Quinn’s “Colonization and the Caribbean,” Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” Kamau
Brathwaite’s “History of the Voice,” and bits of Hegel and Althusser for good measure. In addition, we’ve
also listened to/read two songs as historically contextualized texts evoking two different visions of the
Caribbean: The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” and Harry Belafonte’s “The Banana Boat Song.” Finally we’ve
watched the documentary Life and Debt on globalization, tourism, and Jamaica, loosely based on
Kincaid’s text.
In a formal and well crafted essay of about six pages in length make an argument about one of the
primary texts (Nervous Conditions, Purple Hibiscus, A Small Place, The Pagoda) and connect it to issues
analyzed in the secondary texts (critical articles, songs, documentary). You will need to integrate textual
support via your close reading of the novel and theory you discuss. Include a thesis argument in the first
or second paragraph of your essay and a conclusion at the end. Papers should be in either Times New
Roman (size 12 font) or Calibri (11) and should be double-spaced. Number your pages and provide a
compelling title that captures the essence of your paper.
To refresh your memory, here are some “issues” that we’ve discussed so far: postcolonial critique;
gender critique; psychoanalytical critique; the unconscious; repression (both psychic and material);
alienation (cultural, linguistic, etc.); religion and/or religion and colonization; voice; identity and the self;
split-self; the European slave trade, capitalism, and colonization in the Caribbean; race; “nation
language;” globalization and capitalism and their effects of the “third world” or global South; tourism;
Kincaid’s second person “you;” gender and racial “passing” in The Pagoda, and so on…
Final essays due Sunday 5/22 by 5pm via email. Send Microsoft Word Documents attached to an email
to ianfoster@gmail.com. If I do not reply within 24 hours confirming your email I did not get it.